Bright Eyes

Five Dice, All Threes is a record of uncommon intensity and tenderness, communal exorcism and personal excavation. These are, of course, qualities that fans have come to expect from Bright Eyes, nearly three decades into their career. The tight-knit band of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott tends to operate in distinct sweeping movements: each unique in its sound and story but unified by a sense of ambition and ever-growing emotional stakes. Even with this rich history behind them, these new songs exude a visceral thrill like nothing they have attempted before. Oberst has always sung in a voice that conveys a sense of life-or-death gravity. At times throughout Five Dice, All Threes, you may feel worried for him; other times, he may seem like the only one with the clarity to get us out of this mess.

On the self-produced Five Dice, All Threes, Bright Eyes embrace the elusive quality that has made them so enduring and influential across generations and genres, bringing their homespun sound from an Omaha bedroom to devoted audiences around the world. In Oberst’s songwriting lies a promise that our loneliest thoughts and feelings can take on grander shapes when passed between friends, blasted through speakers, or shouted among crowds. This time around, the band invites such like-minded voices onto the record with them, with notable guest appearances from Cat Power (“All Threes”), The National’s Matt Berninger (“The Time I Have Left”), and Alex Orange Drink, the frontman of the New York punk band The So So Glos, who co-wrote several songs and shares a climactic verse in the surging “Rainbow Overpass.”

Despite this range of collaborators, Five Dice, All Threes is as confessional and unguarded as Oberst has sounded in years. Throughout these timelessly constructed yet unabashedly modern songs, he earns his place among a rare class of songwriters who have grown more fearless and boundless with age. In the scenic “Bas Jan Ader”—which takes its title from the 20th century Dutch performance artist whose final act found him sailing into the Atlantic Ocean, never to return—his writing traces the course of a bad memory smoothing out to invite the onset of nostalgia. “I never thought I’d see 45,” he sings to a lapping, chiming melody. “How is it that I’m still alive?” For an artist who has explored unflinching questions of mortality since his teen years, the writing on Five Dive, All Threes conveys a new sense of urgency—and empathy, too.

“For whatever reason, I was born with a brain that’s preoccupied with that kind of thing,” Oberst says of his lifelong penchant for dark subject matter. “When I was young, there was a performative aspect to it, which got reflected back at me. Now I’m at a point where I don’t care what the reaction is going to be. Before it was a little out of my hands—I didn’t know how to write if it wasn’t specific to my actual life. Now I do it by choice.”

Throughout these reflections on the American landscape, Oberst shuttles us from Los Angeles to New York: two cities he has called home and the locations for his recent series of rapturously received, career-spanning solo residencies. Along the course of his journey, he takes shots at tech billionaires and the rise of artificial intelligence; he offers heartfelt wisdom and slips into clipped, surrealist imagery that earns its place among namechecked literary heroes like Vladimir Nabokov and Mark Twain.

For every striking turn in his lyrics, the band knows just how to complement him. On one level, Five Dice, All Threes may be the most fun album in the Bright Eyes catalog, filled with singalong hooks and buzzing performances. “I think it revisits the spirit of our older records,” Walcott says. “There is a real quality of chaos and ecstatic urgency in the performances.” And yet, sitting alongside these adrenalized rockers that sound beamed in directly from the garage, you will find contemplative, psychedelic material like the heartbreaking “Tiny Suicides” and “All Threes,” a song whose jazzy piano solo and free-associative lyrics feel totally unprecedented in the Bright Eyes catalog.

This vivid, cathartic music arrives four years after the band’s 2020 comeback album Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was. That record’s zoomed-out lyrics and meticulous studio atmosphere resonated during the peak of COVID lockdown and led to Bright Eyes’ long-awaited return to the road in summer 2021. By this point, they were also deep into their Companions project, in which the band reissued their back catalog via new label Dead Oceans along with newly recorded reinterpretations of material throughout their songbook.

In the aftermath of these exhaustive endeavors, the band felt grateful to be back together and somewhat uncertain about their future. It wasn’t until Oberst invited Alex Orange Drink to stay with him in Los Angeles in winter 2023 when a group of new songs started forming. At first, these back-and-forth sessions on Oberst’s porch were just for fun. Recalling his early days of collaboration and scrappy home-recording, the pair sought to keep each other entertained and inspired, with little thought as to where the material would take them. But after completing gems like the anthemic, self-lacerating “Bells & Whistles” and the punky duet of “Rainbow Overpass,” it became clear that Oberst was tapping into new territory.

When they hit the studio with Oberst’s longtime bandmates—the multi-instrumentalist and producer Mike Mogis, the keyboardist and arranger Nate Walcott—they opted for a fast-paced approach that drew inspiration from formative influences like The Replacements and Frank Black. They sought textures that burst from the mix like gnarly splashes of paint on a blank canvas; they opted for first takes and spontaneous decisions. Referring to 2005’s starkly produced landmark, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Mogis laughs, “It took us 20 years to make another record that sounds like a band playing live.” But where those songs exposed the raw beauty of the group’s folksier side, Five Dice, All Threes thrashes and squirms and resists classification. In the brilliant expanse of “El Capitan,” they blend a galloping rhythm you might find in a Johnny Cash standard with a swell of funereal horns, shouted vocals, and lyrics that read like a sobering farewell between twin souls. “So they’re burning you an effigy,” Oberst sings. “Well, that happens to me all the time!”

As per usual, the music comes loaded with subtext that invites deep listening—the signature touch of a band who has always honored the album as its own exalted work of art. In the background of these songs, you can piece together a story about love and fate and identity, stitched together from samples of the 1954 Frank Sinatra film Suddenly, a layered orchestra of people sobbing, and a game of dice that borders on cosmic and lends the album its framing device and winking title: In the game of threes, the titular move would indicate a perfect roll. Perfection, however, means something different in the world of Bright Eyes, where our flaws are what grants us authority and finding meaning is only possible if we bear witness to the dark, winding journey to get there. On Five Dice, All Threes, Bright Eyes embrace these beliefs with music that feels thrillingly alive, as if we were all in the room with them, shouting along and gaining the strength to move forward together. It doesn’t just sound like classic Bright Eyes. It sounds like their future, too.

Cursive

Very few bands manage to last decades, and for the ones that do, it’s often easy to settle down and get a little too comfortable. But there’s nothing comfortable about Devourer, the explosive new album from Cursive. The iconic Omaha group is known for their intensity, ambition, and execution, and has spent 30 years creating a bold discography that’s defined as much by its cathartic sound as its weighty, challenging lyrical themes. And Devourer is as daring as ever. Full of intense and incisive songs, the album proves exactly why Cursive have been so influential and enduring–and why they remain so vital today.

In the years since their 1995 formation, Cursive developed into one of the most important groups to emerge from the late-’90s/early ‘00s moment when the lines between indie rock and post-hardcore began blurring into something altogether new. Albums like Domestica (2000) and The Ugly Organ (2003) became essential touchstones whose echoes can still be heard in new bands today. The pull of nostalgia can be strong over time, but Cursive’s work has often felt like a rejection of those comfort zones; the band has continually pushed themselves, with frontman Tim Kasher’s artistic restlessness steering them ahead. In fact, for Kasher, whose pointed observations always begin with looking inward first, it was an interrogation of this voracious creativity that planted the seeds of Devourer.

“I am obsessive about consuming the arts,” he explains. “Music, film, literature. I’ve come to recognize that I devour all of these art forms then, in turn, create my own versions of these things and spew them out onto the world. It’s positive; you’re part of an ecosystem. But I quickly recognized that the term, ‘Devourer,’ may also embody something gnarly, sinister.” Devourer delves into that darker space. The characters populating the album have bottomless capacities for consumption, whether its resources, material goods, art, or even each other. Then they are consumed by larger forces, whether it’s humanity, Earth, dreams, time, or life itself. “Maybe a better word for it is imperialism,” Kasher says. “But it’s in many different forms. It’s not just the political. It’s personal imperialism and the imperialism of relationships, the way we imperialize one another, even ourselves.”

Fans have come to expect such heady topics from Cursive, but Devourer sets a new standard. The glibness of the First World toward the problems of others. The eternal struggle to stay on the straight and narrow. The eager acolytes exploited by their leaders. How anxiety can compound with age. How self-expression can warp into self-indulgence. Beginning with “Botch Job,” a propulsive banger shaking with anxiety and regret, the album seldom relents. Songs like “The Avalanche of Our Demise,” “What The Fuck,” “Bloodbather,” “Consumers,” and “The Age of Impotence” hit hard, hooking listeners with the unique blend of deep melody and discordant sounds Cursive does so well. Even as songs like “Up and Away,” “Imposturing,” and “Dead End Days” lean more into a poppier sound–or “Dark Star” and “The Loss” tone down the intensity–the album’s underlying disquiet remains. But as always, Cursive is here to wail, not wallow. As Kasher sings in “Bloodbather,” “Life’s an abscess or apple pie / So shut those demons up / And devour your slice.”

Devourer being filled to the brim thematically and musically is unsurprising considering Kasher wrote an astounding 69 compositions after songwriting began in the fall of 2020. About 20 made it to the practice space, with a curated 13 ending up on the final album. Wrangling it all at Omaha’s ARC Studios was Marc Jacob Hudson, who co-produced the album with the band after running live sound on Cursive’s recent tours. Hudson’s lengthy discography includes working with Against Me!, Thursday, and Fireworks, among others, but the musical touchstones he shares with Cursive sealed the deal. “We just got along well and had this kind of shared music history that I found so comforting,” Kasher says. “We were introduced to music in similar ways and, being the same age, share a musical knowledge. It was just so fun and refreshing.”

Now seven members strong (“We seem to be collecting band members over the years,” Kasher jokes), Cursive had a large musical toolbox to use on Devourer. Beyond the core trio of singer/guitarist Kasher, bassist Matt Maginn, and guitarist/vocalist Ted Stevens, there’s keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Newbery, cellist Megan Siebe, recording/touring drummer Pat Oakes, and founding drummer Clint Schnase (the two trade drumming duties across Devourer, but join forces for a two-pronged percussive force in “Rookie”).

Cursive had self-released their two previous albums on their label, 15 Passenger, and initially planned to release Devourer the same way–but ultimately decided to put out some feelers as well. “We got interest and it made it all feel like, ‘Yeah, we should do this,’” Kasher recalls. The group arrived on Run for Cover Records, who were excited to work with a band who has such a deep discography and storied history; it’s a fitting home for Cursive, with new labelmates like Fiddlehead, Citizen, Teen Suicide, and Self Defense Family that share a same DNA of emotionally and sonically biting music. “It really is the first time that we’ve gone off to another label since we started in 1995, when we signed to Crank! Records,” Kasher says. “So there’s a certain excitement to that. It’s no longer the excitement of, ‘We just got signed! I wonder what’s going to happen with this record?!’ It’s more like we’re doing something different–nothing feels rote.” Maginn adds, “More than most bands, our labels have been part of our history. We did it ourselves for years with 15 Passenger, so it’s a big deal to us to take on and trust new partners.”

While Cursive’s music hasn’t gotten any more comfortable, perhaps its being released into a world that’s at least a little more shaped in their image. Devourer sounds urgent and fresh, the work of a band still experimenting, still hungering to find new creative heights. On album highlight “Consumers,” the protagonist bemoans, “I saw our future and I want to go back.” But Cursive are only moving forward.